Square Foot Gardening with a Planting Jig

It's March 31 and I am spending most of the day out in the garden.  I've just finished direct sowing the carrots and beets.   What's amazing is that I am doing it in the sun on a very warm day.  In March.  In Washington!  The gardening gods are smiling today :)

This is my "root vegetable" bed.  It is deeper than the other beds and has a permanently installed soil warmer cable.   I plugged it in three days ago and now the soil is up to 70 degrees and ready for planting.  I'll keep the cable plugged in for another 10 days or so, until most of the carrots have sprouted.  You'll notice off to the left the drip system that I drained and set aside at the end of the "dry" season.  What I've found works well for hooking it all up again is to get the seeds and/or transplants into the  bed and then string the drip system for the best coverage.

I'm using the planting jigs FitzGyver made for me last year.  They really make it easy to plant a Square Foot Garden.  I place one seed in each hole ....

... cover the holes with a thin layer of vermiculite ...

...remove the jig ...

...and then gently firm the seed and vermiculite in to the soil.

I used a 16 plants per square foot jig for the carrots and a 9 plants per square for the beets in the back of the bed.

Enjoy!

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head ....

Well, it's monsoon season in the Pacific Northwest ... we might see the sun again on Saturday.

I've been running out between downpours (and sometimes during them) to work on the newly remodeled raised beds.  As I mentioned a while back we decided to reconfigure the garden and add some mole proofing while we were tearing everything up to put in the new greenhouse.  I have three 4 x 8' beds to work on getting planted now.  Here's a shot from a second floor window of the new configuration with the greenhouse foundation coming along on the left...

The center bed is the deep, heated bed for my root crops.  As usual I forgot to put the heating cable (Charley's Greenhouse) in before we added the soil so I ended up having to dig trenches in the bed to install it ...

Once I got the cord buried I plugged it in and covered the bed with some plastic sheeting to retain the heat and let the bed warm up for a couple of days...

 I used my 16 per square foot seeding jig to space  my carrot seed and a 9 per square foot to space the beets.  I cover the seeds with vermiculite so I know exactly where they are ... anything that comes up outside one of those little circles is a weed and can be safely plucked out.

I watered the bed lightly and covered it with a piece of burlap and then laid another soil warming cable ( a FitzGyvered special) on top of the burlap.

The two cables together brought the soil temperature from 41 degrees up to a toasty 63 degrees and I had my first seed germination in six days.  Once the seedlings started popping up I removed the burlap and replaced the second heating cable.

Once the rest of the seeds have germinated I will unplug the permanently installed cable and remove the temporary one to use on another bed.  It's a lot of work, but with temperature still in the 40's it's the only way to get my direct sown seeds germinated in time to have two crops during the growing season.  Oh, the joys of gardening in the soggy Pacific Northwest :)

Enjoy!

Harvest Monday ... and Big Changes

Whoo Hoo!  I have a harvest!  I had a bed of beets that I had planted late last summer for overwintering.  The last time I had checked they didn't appear to have really done anything and as a part of the "Big Change" I was pulling them out so I could dismantle the raised bed ... and lo and behold, I actually have a few beets big enough to make a serving at a meal!

I'm joining other bloggers over at Daphne's Dandelions as we share our weekly harvests...it's fun to see what others are harvesting and what they are cooking up with it...check it out!

Now on to the changes!  I mentioned a while back that we are putting in a greenhouse.  As a result, one of my raised beds was going to have to be dismantled.  When we took it apart I realized why the moles had been able to get into my beds last spring ... the chicken wire we had placed under them was rusted and torn in several places.  The decision was made.  We are going to have another late spring in the Pacific Northwest.  While the rest of the country is having record high temperatures we are expected to have snow tonight!  As long as spring is on hold we decided to go ahead and pull up all of the raised beds, reconfigure the garden layout and mole proof the beds.

We went form this (taken last summer) ...

... to this, with two of the beds removed ...

... and adding hardware cloth nailed to the bottoms ...

... replaced three of the beds.  Here you can see the beginnings of the foundation for the greenhouse and the three 4' x 8' beds in the background.  There is still the 3' x 12' bed in the back. (The broken down fence and dead trees are on the neighbors property ... nothing I can do except hide them eventually with some trellis and vines :(

Once the greenhouse construction is completed there will be room for one more 4' x 8' bed; we will wait  to put it in so as to give us room to move around while building.

We are also taking out the beds that were in front of the dogs yard ... that area just gets too muddy with our Washington rains.  I'm going to have three pretty wine barrels with flowers and herbs there instead.  I will end up with about a third less growing space in the back of the house, but I figure some of that will be made up for by the greenhouse and also some by the new cold frame that we have added to the front of the house down by the lake....

I'm hoping to transplant some of my Asian greens from the potting shed into the cold frame by the end of the week, depending on how much snow we get.

It's a lot of changes but I think it will be better looking and easier to care for.  I'll keep you posted!

Enjoy!

A Great Raised Bed Garden Tutorial!!

I found this today and just have to share it!



I love what she does with her chicken coops ... Brilliant!

Enjoy!

Harvest Monday ... and the First Planting Update

I'm joining other bloggers over at Daphne's Dandelions as we share our weekly harvests...it's fun to see what others are harvesting and what they are cooking up with it...check it out!

I won't have a harvest from the garden for quite a while yet ... my arthritis flare up in the fall kept my fall/winter garden from getting planted (I didn't even get all the fall cleanup done ... it's a mess out there that I am just starting to tackle).  We are still eating from our frozen and canned stores, though.  I made lasagna rolls with some of the Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce Saturday night and (Whoo Hoo!)  my first  homemade ricotta cheese!  It came out great but was unfortunately camera shy (next time, I promise :).

The first of my seedlings are starting to sprout in the potting shed ...

And today the weather was nice enough for me to get the first of the raised beds prepared ...

... and planted my first batch of carrot seeds.  FitzGyver made me some new "Square Foot" planting jigs that I think I am really going to like using.  I have one with nine holes per square foot and another with sixteen.  These are going to be great both for direct seeding and for spacing transplants.

My first 32 carrots were quickly seeded  ...

... and tucked in under a germination mat.  I'll start checking for germination in a few days and remove the mat once the first seedlings appear.

I put the plastic cover back over the bed ...

... and that's one bed started, only 5 more to go!

Enjoy!

I Am A Subversive Plotter!

Here's a really good video about reasons for growing our kitchen gardens ...



Enjoy!

Planning. Planning, Planning...

Well, the two new lakeside beds are on temporary hold while we redo the landscaping nearby...which means that what was going to be my early pea patch is now not going to be available in time.  So the pea patch will go into Backyard 5 and I'm thinking of doing a 3 Sisters (beans, corn and squash) planting in Lakeside 1.  I read the posts on the Modern Victory Garden Blog about their 3 Sisters planting and I'd like to give it a try.... 

I've spent a lot of time online these past few days...I guess you could call it studying.  I'm hoping that doing more research and planning will result in a good harvest this year.  Last summer's harvest was pretty much of a bust except for the always cooperative potatoes.  Knee surgery at the end of June (and not being able to do more than hobble for the 2 or three months before that) kept my gardening activities to a minimum and then the weather wasn't cooperative either.

As part of my "studies" I've been visiting the blogs of many other gardeners...many of them with a lot of gardening experience that they generously share in their blog posts.  I was really impressed with the planting spreadsheet that was posted on Daphne's Dandelions.  I have the software for a spreadsheet, but am pretty much clueless as to how to set one up.  Google to the rescue!  There are so many people out there willing to share what they have made...I love the Internet.

My first find was an easy to use seed starting calculator on the  Johnny's Selected Seeds web site.  It was easy to use; I could put in the frost date for my area and it gave me the dates to start the seed and transplant out for many varieties of vegetables and flowers.  But I wanted something that I could download and modify, so I kept looking.

My next find was The Lazy Gardener's Seed Starting Chart  developed by Maggie Wang the "You Grow Girl" web site.  It can be downloaded for free and modified by the user, but didn't have quite all the features I wanted...so I kept going through the Google list...and then I struck pay dirt!

I found a spreadsheet that  Danny Clark shared on the AeroGardenGrowers Forum.  I can set it up by order of date of planting, rather than alphabetically, it has columns for the days to maturity and yield date, which is great information for successive plantings and, best of all...it's set up for Square Foot Gardening...it even has a separate page for laying out a garden!

Here is my filled in spreadsheet...(click on it and use the zoom feature to see it closer to full size)...

And part of my garden layout plan...

I now have most of my planning done and just need get my seeds started on time and get my raised beds cultivated and ready for planting...Kudos to Danny for sharing this great spreadsheet with his fellow gardeners!!

Enjoy!

Deb

Harvest Monday....And Three More Raised Beds!

This will be the last harvest from the fall/winter bed....we have taken the cover off and are disassembling the bed in preparation for some landscaping work.  We are supposed to get an Arctic Blast tonight...temps down into the low 20s... so I harvested all that was still growing, enough lettuce for a nice salad and Asian greens for a stir fry.

 I'm joining other bloggers over at Daphne's Dandelions as we share our weekly harvests...it's fun to see what others are harvesting and what they are cooking up with it...check it out!

And on to the new raised beds!  I'm hoping to push my spring planting along very early with hoops and row covers.  Mike finished up the last three raised beds for the backyard on Saturday...

This what it looked like after we took out the old beds....

Mike built the boxes in his shop and then we carried them out to the yard. Here Mike is installing the hoops....

And here are the finished beds (why does this photo remind me of 1960's television???  OH! Westward Ho!  Circle the wagons! )  The bed in the foreground is going to be for my indeterminate tomatoes and will have trellises with a high hoop cover installed later in the season.

The center bed is going to be my pea patch and the last one will have Asian greens.  I'll be planting these up very soon with what I have started in the greenhouse....

Enjoy!

Deb

Garden Chores....

I'm almost finished with the three Square Foot Garden beds in the backyard (to be referred to as Backyard 1, 2 and 3 from this point on) ...

I need to get more brackets to hold the PVC for the hoops for the middle bed and paint the end corner brackets ( I'm waiting for a sunny day for the painting...don't worry, I'm not holding my breath :)  The bed closest to the house is going to be my kitchen herb garden; rosemary, thyme, parsley, sage and a few others with some lettuces and early peas mixed in.  The other two beds will vary with the season but I hope that all will work for fall and winter gardening.  Mike and I will be working on putting the three 4 x 8 foot beds (to be referred to as Backyard 4, 5 and 6) together this evening and I'll hopefully get the hoops attached and then get them filled up with soil this weekend.

Mike (aka FitzGyver) finished up two potato boxes for me.  They are so pretty is almost a shame to get them dirty.......

I read about these last year on Sinfonian's Square Foot Garden Blog .  I tried using wire cages last year, which were ok, but had their drawbacks (sharp edges and the soil washed away in heavy rains).  I'm planning on having a total of four boxes plus a small raised bed for Yukon Golds down by the lake this summer. 

The seeds I started in the greenhouse over the weekend are coming along nicely...

I'll be starting more this weekend...hopefully my order from Territorial Seeds will be here tomorrow....

Enjoy!

Deb